about the author

Gregg Murray lives in Atlanta and teaches English at Georgia Perimeter College. Some of his recent poetry has
appeared in DIAGRAM, Caketrain, Interrupture, alice blue, Scythe, Midway, Mandala, Denver Syntax, elimae, and New South. He is a contributing poetry editor for The Chattahoochee Review. This year he is writing on a fellowship from the Southern Academy for Literary Arts and Scholarship. Also, he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

You Prevaricate

softly in this garish armistice. Yeah, I know your eau de parfum with its wan wizardry stamps a wax seal. No, no, it’s a writ of mandamus! that fields this mush that melts again and hardens. Enter displasia, noun, the redirection of affection, a simulacrum which is then forgotten. Scorching ahead it’s a flare that floundering
fizzles. I could see it from our dinghy. I put my coat around your avian shoulders and ask you to ease your whistle, if I may. I’m a maniac, maniac, and I taxidermy this lagoon till not even Thomas Kinkade can tell the difference. I sell it in a mall. At a kiosk, no less. Just forge your name right here, Babe, by the X.